Mexico: The theme is violence

The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis. You are free to disseminate this information, but we request that you credit NAFBPO as being the provider.To subscribe, click here

Friday, 2/26/10

El Imparcial , Critica (both: Hermosillo, Sonora) 2/25/10

Arsenal seized

The following is a list of the items seized from two houses in Navojoa, a city in the south of the state of Sonora:

Seventy-five AK47 & AR15 assault rifles. Thirty of them unused and still in their cases

In Morelia, state of Michoacán, local officials are investigating “a new modality of executions carried out by organized crime, by means of a lethal injection.” Two cadavers found in Apatzingan underwent necropsy; both were found to have been tortured, but they also had a “poisonous solution in the veins” and a “needle marking on an arm.”

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Diario de Yucatan (Merida, Yucatan) 2/25/10

Violence brings closure of U.S. Consulate in Reynosa

U.S. officials today announced the temporary closure of the U.S. Consulate in the border city of Reynosa, because in the last days several shootouts have taken place “in which it is believed that narcotics organizations have participated.” A source at the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, capital of the state of Nuevo Leon, said that the consulate at Reynosa, a city located in the northern state of Tamaulipas “only attends U.S. citizens” and “will remain closed temporarily until further notice.” Armed confrontations have taken place in rural towns in Tamaulipas and neighboring Nuevo Leon and have resulted in 25 deaths.

The U.S. Consulate in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, “has restricted the travel of U.S. officials to Reynosa until further notice.” Likewise, the agency advised U.S. citizens “to be current about local events, via the news media coverage” when traveling toward or through Reynosa.

School classes have been suspended in Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo, as well as in rural towns in Nuevo Leon such as Bravo, China and los Ramones, due to rumors concerning new confrontations between rival narco trafficking groups. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico has had to order the temporary closing of several of its consulates in Mexico due to the insecurity generated by organized crime activities in the country.

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El Universal (Mexico City) 2/25/10

A bloody preface

The following are the first two out of a 16 paragraph article titled: “Mafia colors the country red: 56 die.”

The intensification of violence in the country left 56 dead in the last few hours. Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon and Sinaloa were the scenario of shootouts and executions, among which are the murders of a police chief and two city police agents. With this violent day, the narco’s offensive brought about 150 homicides so far this week, among them the mayor of Mezquital, Durango, and the multi-execution of the Maciel family on Tuesday night in Oaxaca.

Two complete human arms, apparently cut off less than 8 hours before, were found inside an ice chest in Ciudad Altamirano, Guerrero. The body has not been found, nor has the head relating to a murder victim found last week. That one had his arms cut off at the elbows.

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[As readers of the M3 Report can well imagine, if only by looking through the above few items, its preparation entails wading chest deep through an endless quagmire of gore, inhumanity and seemingly uncontrollable violence. The M3 attempts to furnish a picture of conditions in general, rather than detailing cases. Occasionally, however, the report of a particular crime is so unbelievable that it demands full description as published. Such is the case with the following item.]

El Diario (Ciudad Juarez) 2/25/10

Police chief executed at a grade school door

(Dateline: Chihuahua, the capital of the state of the same name.) The Coordinator of the Chihuahua Municipal Police, Antonio Olague Rios, 39 years old, was executed by gunfire in the morning in front of his son and his wife, at the door of the Luis Donaldo Colossio grade school. Other witnesses of the execution were students, parents and some teachers, who became alarmed upon seeing the hired killers shooting at the police chief, (and) for which reason the classes were suspended.

The assault took place at around 07:50 hours yesterday, when Olague Rios and his spouse arrived walking at the school door to leave their son. As soon as Antonio Olague arrived at the school, three men, clad as “cholos”, went up to him and used their firearms. Olague Rios fell by the door to the school, badly wounded, to the disbelief of his spouse, son and other pupils who were arriving at the school. He lay there, unconscious but alive. “Don’t go, resist, resist!” were the words of encouragement that Olague got from his wife at his side. A few minutes after the attack, several policemen and emergency workers arrived to help their companion. The wounded man was taken by ambulance to the Clinica del Parque, where he arrived still alive, but he died moments later. He had several bullet wounds, one of them, a mortal one, to his head.

Police were not able to find the killers. (The photo below relates.) [Ironically, the school is named after a past candidate for the presidency of Mexico, himself the victim of a close range firearm attack that killed him also.]

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El Debate (Culiacan Sinaloa) 2/25/10

“How screwed up?” (Portions of an op/col. by Guadalupe Loaeza, titled as shown.)

[During a recent radio interview in Spain, Javier Aguirre, the coach of the Mexican national soccer team, said that Mexico was “all screwed up” and that he yearned for the tranquility of twenty years ago. This triggered an explosion of protests on “twitters” and other forms. The coach soon apologized, but the incident caused this commentary.]

If the poll takers had asked my opinion about the statement, I would have said that El Vasco [referring to the coach] is right; we live in a country ever more screwed up. Going out on the street causes fear, we live in anguish for our children and grandchildren, there are no jobs, justice does not work in Mexico, corruption is everywhere, no one respects anything, the infrastructure (the electrical installations, the pavement, the highways, the railroad doesn’t exist) is in ruins, we are the fattest in the world, at the same time that there are millions of poor, the educational system makes you cry, telecommunications are in the hands of a few, tourism has decreased noticeably, the ecological environment is ever more deteriorated, organized crime has taken over the country, we import everything and we export people, the number of assassinations grows every day and none of them is solved, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

How is such a country? Screwed up!!! How are we? Screwed up!!!How does the world see us? Very, very screwed up!!!